


First Flight

by holdouttrout



Series: SG-1 Dragonriders AU [2]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-01
Updated: 2007-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 20:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holdouttrout/pseuds/holdouttrout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Jack are both dragonriders on Pern. Sam's dragon is about to mate for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Flight

Sam stretched out her arms, content to sit on the high ridge overlooking Central Weyr's weyrbowl while Jolinath exposed her golden hide to the early summer rays. She felt a trickle of affection along her bond to the large dragon and returned it. Her last season to try for a dragonet, and she'd gotten lucky. She shoved all these thoughts aside as Jolinath shifted her weight, settling deeper into her nap. She could no longer imagine her life without her devoted, often ravenous companion and most of the time felt she should simply accept what she regarded as a miracle.

She let her thoughts drift as she leaned her weight against Jolinath's leg. She was alone on the ridge today, most of the Wings having taken off for maneuvering practice. Thread was coming, and the only reason Sam wasn't with them was because, as the rider of a young queen who had not yet flown, she was exempt. Not that she hadn't tried to go, but J'ack had been adamant that she would just pose a danger to the Wings. She flushed with anger at the memory of his high-handed dismissal of her request.

_"I don't want to hear any more, Sam. You are not going."_  
   
"J'ack, I am bored. Jolinath is restless." 

_"Exactly. She is restless because she is close to her first flight."_

_"J'ack!"_

_He turned his head away from her. "Your father would have my hide if I let his daughter act in such an irresponsible manner."_

_"My father is not leader of this Weyr. You are, at least until Anyth or Jolinath has her first mating flight.” Both Freya's and Sam’s queens were nearing the time when they would go into estrus for the first time. Sam wasn’t entirely happy that the leadership of Central Weyr would be left up to chance, but there was no other Weyr that needed the extra queen as badly as Central._

_J’ack’s eyes glittered coldly. “As Weyrleader, I’m telling you to stay put. Jolinath is very close, Sam. She would distract and be distracted. With Thread coming, we cannot afford mistakes.”_

_He turned away from Sam and mounted Solth. They dropped off the ledge and caught air up to the waiting Wing._

She shook off her anger and tried to distract herself by thinking about flying. So far, she and Jolinath had had little time to practice going between, but Sam couldn't help but shiver at the thought of absolute cold and darkness. She had been trying to solve the mystery of where, exactly, the dragons went when they disappeared and before the reappeared somewhere else. She had already perused the weyr’s library for theories, but had found nothing particularly helpful. She wondered if she could look in the archives at the Harper Hall sometime.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't realize another dragon was landing on the ridge until it was almost on top of her. It was a blue, but very large, almost the size of a brown, and that meant...

"D'nel!" she cried, getting up and rushing over to greet the rider she'd known since she was a little girl. He grinned, almost shyly, and hugged her stiffly, still in his leathers and with an air of between about him.

"What brings you from those rider-thieves at Harper Hall?" she asked. D'nel, who was almost hopeless as a regular rider, had been attached to the Harper Hall as a messenger, aide, and transport service for the Masters there. He also did a lot more scholarly work than was good for him.

"I have a message for J'ack from the Master Harper himself. About the coming Thread patterns."

Sam visibly stiffened. D'nel's shoulders sagged. "Oh, Sam, what has he done now?"

She felt Jolinath stretching languidly behind her. "It's nothing. Differences of opinion, that's all." D'nel looked at her curiously. She changed the subject. "How's Moth?" she asked, using the nickname given to Merenth, D'nel's dragon, because he was such a light blue and had been small as a new hatchling. The dragon in question fixed his great whirling eyes on her, reflecting his amusement. D'nel smiled.

"He says it's a good thing he likes you. Not many call him that these days."

Sam laughed. "I can see why not!"

"How about Jolinath?" He looked over at the gold, who was shining in the sun. She looked especially luminescent today, thought Sam, just as D'nel's expression changed from a friendly open one to an amazed and worried one.

"Sam," he said, getting a very peculiar tone in his voice. "Where is J'ack?"

Bewildered, Sam said, "With the Wings, practicing formations. He'll be back at dusk..."

"That's too late. I'm going to..."

Without finishing his sentence, he leaped up on Merenth's back, fixing the straps on his clothing as he settled into his seat.

"Whatever you do, Sam, don't let her eat the flesh and don't let her fly too soon!" he shouted just before dropping off the ridge and rising, rising until he winked out above her. In astonishment at his words, she stared at Jolinath, who moved restlessly in her sleep, her gold color just that little bit too much that Sam had seen on other golds just before their flights.

She realized, abruptly, that D’nel’s reaction to the situation meant that he was already aware of the politics inside the Weyr, and what this flight meant. She felt a twinge of annoyance as she thought that J’ack must have been keeping him informed.

As she watched, Jolinath twitched again and woke up, flooding Sam all at once with a million sensations. She and Jolinath stretched in tandem, feeling the sun on their skin, the warm breeze calling them to fly.

Then Jolinath's hunger slammed into Sam and she almost dropped to her knees. Jolinath launched herself from the ledge, circling above the herds that had mostly been left in peace today. Jolinath keened her hunger, and swooped. She dropped her first kill, and made to tear into it, but Sam finally recovered enough and exerted every ounce of will to keep Jolinath from devouring the beast whole.

 _Blood only_ , she thought desperately. _I need you to survive_.

Furious, Jolinath finished the first and launched herself again. Sam wondered what she was supposed to do with a queen in heat when she was all alone. She held Jolinath back again, and suddenly the sky was full of dragons that settled as close to Sam as they could, depositing their riders before making room for more. Sam barely noticed as she held Jolinath back a third time, only letting her blood her kill.

She was just barely aware of J’ack shouting at her—probably telling me what I know already—she thought, and twisted away from him. He came with her, and for just one moment, as she blinked, she saw him leaning close to her, cupping her face in his hands. Then her awareness jerked back to Jolinath as she raised her head in a loud cry, and this time Sam did fall, although she was vaguely aware of hands helping her up, holding her as Jolinath launched herself up, up, up and this was truly flying, and behind her the startled bronzes finally took off, chasing her with powerful sweeps of their wings. But she was faster, and stronger, and she climbed away from them, daring them to keep up and trying her best to lose them.

Sam followed the chase through her link to Jolinath, no longer able to distinguish between dragon and rider, Jolinath's body and her own. Dragon after dragon dropped away from the flight, and Sam was aware that the press of bodies around her was lessening. She was shaking, and someone was whispering what sounded like nonsense in her ear, but it all felt very far away. More pressing was her raw need that kept spiraling up even as Jolinath tired of the chase and chose her mate, a bronze who had flown with her the whole way, seeming to know each maneuver she would make before she made it. She flipped herself over, her wings tangling with the bronze’s and they fell together, plummeting toward the ground, finding an ecstasy of fulfillment and making Sam stagger at the unbelievable weight of what she was feeling as human hands caught her and lifted her until she was flying again.

She woke in J'ack's arms, her heart still beating a dragon-rhythm, her legs and arms heavy and slick with sweat. She felt Jolinath's own smug self-satisfaction in the back of her mind, and stifled a snort of amusement. J'ack stirred and she stiffened, unsure now of what she was supposed to say or expect.  Most times the partners just acknowledged each other politely and went on with their lives. Relationships in the Weyr got too complicated otherwise.

She found herself a little annoyed at J'ack. He'd acted so indifferent, so annoyingly superior, and then to have been like he was earlier...she was certain he’d been the one holding her from the start. She shook her head to clear it. She realized, bitterly, that she didn't want a polite acknowledgment, not from him.

He opened his eyes and smiled, sliding his hand over her shoulder, up her neck and into her hair. She fought against her reaction to him, unwilling to let him see her so vulnerable only to have him walk away.

He kissed her collarbone and her eyes closed despite her promises.

"Now that was a first flight," he said. At her frown, he shifted back a little.

"What? Are you hurt?” He looked around them, from where they were lying on a pile of their clothes to the harsh ground nearby.

She shook her head mutely and sat up.

He thrust a hand through his cropped and slightly graying hair. "Oh, for...what's the matter with you?" he demanded.

She hated that she was emotional about this but found herself choking back a sob. "With me? Nothing. I'm fine. You're the one who's been treating me like a child, ever since Jolinath chose me. Now you..." and she cut herself off before she said anything else.

J’ack’s eyes widened. “Sam, this,” he waved a hand between them, “doesn’t have to mean --“

“Anything? I think I understand that, J’ack! That’s the way it works, right? Fly the dragon, screw the girl and get back to business?” She was raising her voice. She knew she was being unreasonable.

“Normally, yes!” He was losing his temper, too. He gestured wildly. “This doesn’t have to be about you, Sam, it doesn’t have to—“

He stopped in mid-sentence, his hand flung out in midair, finally tilted his head to the side as if considering something that had never occurred to him before.

Sam flushed again as his eyes traveled over her exposed body, seemingly of their own accord and she knew, without a doubt, that he was thinking of them, together. She tried to cover herself with her shirt that she found lying nearby. Still, he said nothing, just kept looking at her.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “Well, that makes everything more-- Sam, why didn’t you say something?”

She avoided his eyes. “You made your own feelings clear in the matter.”

“What? When?”

“Last greenflight.”

Jack opened his mouth, obviously not remembering, but snapped it shut as something occurred to him.

“Oh,” he said.

“’I have no interest in you or anyone else sharing my bed,’” Sam quoted.

J’ack winced. “She was being…forceful. I had to tell her something.”

And this time Sam caught a little bit of the panic he’d felt at being cornered by Freya—blunt, straightforward, ambitious Freya—in a dark corridor during greenflight.

J’ack leaned forward. “Sam, I…care for you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not as young as I like to think. I’ve been Solth’s rider just over twenty turns.”

Sam shook her head. “J’ack, you Impressed when you were fifteen. I’m twenty-four.”

“Most people regard ten turns as a large age difference.”

She rolled her eyes. “Since when have I been like most people?” And, because someone needed to, she made the next move, sliding closer to him and placing her hand on his leg. She didn’t miss his reaction. She leaned over him, intending to lay all her cards on the table at once, just so he couldn’t second-guess her again.

Just before she touched his lips, he backed up and held up a hand. "I wouldn't have been Freya's Weyrleader for a whole clutch of golds.” He shuddered.

Sam thought of Freya trying to work with J'ack, perpetually oblivious to his dislike of her. And J'ack, poor J'ack, trying to impress upon an oblivious Freya what he thought needed to be done.

She couldn't repress a laugh at the image. J'ack smirked at her. "Exactly. Anise wouldn't be...so bad...on her own. She's smart enough. I think. And O'len or M'tor would have been able to work around her."

Sam raised her eyebrows. "You gave this a lot of thought."

“It appears, maybe too much.”

They regarded each other silently for a minute. Then J'ack grinned.

"You are so..."

"Dirty? Sweaty? Sunburned?"

J'ack shrugged. "I was going to say hot."

Sam blinked at him for about two seconds, then dropped her shirt so she could grab him and pull him to her. His eyes finally came back up to her face and he smirked just before she kissed him.

And even though the sun was already slipping behind the opposite ridge it was much later before they returned to the Weyr.


End file.
